MSI Z87M-GAMING Motherboard Review

MSI is pushing hard with their Intel Z87 lineup; the gaming series motherboards are getting the same love from the gaming community as the alike named graphics solutions. Combining stunning looks with durability and great performance retailing at a very competitive price; it really feels times are changing and a certain A brand seems to slowly loose it grips on the market. The MSI Z87M Gaming motherboard is a full blown Z87 chipset based mATX motherboard with hardly any compromises made to the design. Nevertheless MSI manages to undercut the prices of the main competitors gaming oriented board offerings.

A Closer Look Part I

Another shot of the power circuitry of the processor: an 8-pin power plug is located near the top of the PCB, another indication that this MSI design prefers full power stability instead of cutting back and opting to install a 4-pin power plug.

The 2 phase powered four DIMM slots support DRAM speeds over DDR3-3000MHz (OC) and a whopping total of 32GB can be installed on this mATX PCB motherboard. Near the 24-PIN ATX power connector a debug LED is located to quickly detect the culprit when things go wrong. Another touch of class are the on-board Power, Reset and MSI's patented OC Genie button. A simple press on the latter will overclock your K Skew processor to 4000 or 4200MHz, depending on the position of the below pictured OC switch. Sadly on our test sample this switch made no difference; either it was broken or the used BIOSes did not properly detect its actual set position to boost the overclock to 4200MHz.

The 7.1-channel High Definition Audio is provided by a Realtek ALC1150 Codec. MSI baptizes its audio solution as Audio Boost. The LED illuminated EMI shielded Codec chip linked to the OPA1652 amplifier and the throughout used High Quality Audio Capacitors will immerse the gamer in the game, movie or music.